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ahead of her made it an effort to set one foot in front of the other. The notion of all those empty years to come without even the occasional sight of him pressed down on her like a ton weight. She stopped outside the door to put on a suitably serene expression before she met Cully’s shrewd gaze, then walked in.
‘Oh, there you are, my dear. There’s no need for you to stay with her ladyship tonight,’ the elderly maid said with a nod to the other side of the bed where the new master of the house sat. ‘Master Luke won’t hear of anyone else keeping vigil.’
‘No, I won’t,’ he said in a flatly emotionless voice that told her there was no point arguing.
‘Quite right too,’ Cully said with an approving nod. ‘You need a good night’s sleep and no argument, Mrs Wheaton. If you spend one more day trying to fit a month’s worth of work into twenty-four hours, you’ll collapse. Your little miss is home now and we don’t want her more upset than she is already.’
‘Aye, go to bed,’ Lord Farenze barked from the most heavily shadowed corner of the room.
‘Very well,’ she said, knowing she couldn’t argue in front of Culdrose and turned to go before the temptation to do it anyway overtook her.
‘See she drinks one of your noxious potions and really does sleep, Cully,’ she heard Lord Farenze say when she’d almost shut the door behind her. ‘I wouldn’t put it past the confounded woman to steal in here if I fall asleep to take your place, so she can boast she sat by her employer day and night when she applies for her next post.’
As if she would be so mercenary. Arrogant, unfeeling wretch—he would never believe she had loved wonderful, complicated Lady Virginia Winterley very deeply. He was always on the lookout for a base motive, a different sin to visit on her, as if she might have sprouted horns and a tail when he wasn’t looking.
‘Now then, Master Luke, you’re being unjust. That girl loved her ladyship and would have done almost anything for her.’
‘Except go away,’ he raised his voice just enough to grumble so she couldn’t fail to hear him.
Chloe flinched and wondered how he knew she couldn’t bring herself to leave when Lady Virginia breathed her last, before he got here. Bracing herself against the fact he wanted her gone, she made herself walk away noisily enough to let him know he could say whatever he liked and she didn’t care.
Back in her room, she wished it as many rooms as possible from where Lord Farenze was taking the last vigil at his great-aunt’s side. To be within call if her mistress needed her, Chloe was using an odd little bedchamber over the grand gallery that only unimportant guests were ever given, because the high ceiling of the room below meant the floor of this one was raised on a minor staircase with three other cramped chambers. It had been convenient to stay close to Lady Virginia’s lofty suite, until now. So why hadn’t she moved back to her modest room a floor up and at the back of the house as soon as Lord Farenze had set foot in Farenze Lodge? She hadn’t known Verity would be home then and marvelled at herself for being so foolish as to stay within shouting distance of the state rooms now.
It was too late to change even if Verity hadn’t arrived so much in need of a good night’s sleep, so she yawned and hoped for a dreamless sleep against the odds. She had more to disturb her than ever, but after a soft tap came on the door, Cully opened it a half-inch on her invitation to enter.
‘Are you decent, dear?’ she whispered.
‘Aye,’ Chloe admitted with a half-smile at herself in the dimly visible mirror that said it was as well nobody could see into her head. ‘Come in, Cully.’
‘His lordship says you’re to drink this down and I’m to stay until you do,’ her old friend told her sternly.
Chloe sniffed the fumes coming from the steaming mug she held out and caught a hint of camomile, a waft of cinnamon and some honey to sweeten it all and decided there was nothing in it to worry her, even if such a mild concoction was unlikely to make her sleep soundly tonight.
‘Very well,’ she said with a resigned shrug. She knew that resolute expression of Cully’s of old and didn’t feel like a battle to resist her at the moment.
‘I’ll sit here until you’re finished then go to bed myself. My lady is in safe hands and would be the first to tell us to get to bed and show some sense.’
‘I know, but you’re the last person I need to tell how hard it is to be sensible at a time like this,’ Chloe said with a sigh as she paused her drinking and earned a frown. ‘If I drink any faster, I’ll choke,’ she excused herself.
‘I suppose so, but his lordship is right. You look as if a strong gust of wind could blow you into next week.’
‘Kind of him,’ Chloe retorted ruefully.
‘He is a kind man, child, if only you would see it. You two bring out the worst in each another, but Master Luke was a good-hearted, gallant lad before that silly girl nagged and flouted him until he hardly knew which way was up any more.’
‘He’s hardly a lad now, or very gallant.’
‘No, he’s a man nowadays and a fine-looking one at that.’
Chloe distrusted the sly glance her old friend was shooting her. Cully knew her a little too well, after ten years of service in the same house. So, if the elderly ladies’ maid knew she was deeply attracted to her gallant lad, who else might have their suspicions she wouldn’t leave Farenze Lodge as heart-whole as a sober and respectable housekeeper should?
Chloe shook her head and carefully ignored that truth as she swallowed the last of Cully’s brew. She felt as if she was back in the nursery herself when Cully unpinned her tightly bound locks and gently combed them out, but the deft touch soothed her as the potion hadn’t yet managed to.
‘There, is that better?’ Cully asked as she brushed Chloe’s heavy locks into a burnished red-gold mass.
‘Aye,’ Chloe admitted with a long sigh. ‘You’re very good at your job, Cully,’ she murmured when she felt the silken thickness gathered into the elderly maid’s hand and separated into three as Cully began a loose plait.
‘And you have beautiful hair, Mrs Chloe,’ the maid told her with a hint of sternness in her voice. ‘A good many ladies would give their eye-teeth for such a colour and it’s so fine and thick they would be green with envy if they ever saw it. You shouldn’t screw it into such a tight knot. It’s not good for it and small wonder if you have the headache after going about with all those pins skewered into it all day.’
‘If I don’t, it keeps trying to escape.’
‘And a very good thing if it succeeded, if you ask me,’ she thought she heard Cully mumble under her breath, but looking up she found the older woman was looking back at her in the mirror with such a look of bland innocence she told herself she must have been mistaken. ‘There you are, you’re all ready for bed and make sure you stay there till you’re rested in the morning. Martha Lange’s quite capable of getting breakfast cooked without you there to tell her how to coddle an egg and that head housemaid you set such store by can set the maids to work for once.’
‘Yes, Miss Culdrose, ma’am,’ Chloe said with a mock salute and was brusquely told not to be impudent before Cully wished her a dignified goodnight and went off to spend a full night in her own bed for the first time in weeks as well.
* * *
At first it was the most wonderful dream. Chloe shifted under the smooth linen sheets to murmur approval in her sleep. Luke was here, kissing her and doing all the things she had longed for him to do all these years. She had sent him away and told him she could imagine nothing more humiliating than being his mistress all those years ago, but she’d lied. In her unchecked fantasy he was indeed Luke and not Lord Farenze and he kissed her as if the next beat of his heart depended on her kissing him back.
She writhed against her hot pillow and keened a protest as a dash of reality beat in and she knew the